RUSSELL WANGERSKY: Chicken soup as therapy

Making a pot of homemade chicken soup can be good therapy. — 123RF Stock Photo

When things go wrong — really wrong — I recommend soup.

Two-day soup. Chicken. Not the eating, necessarily — the making.

Keep in mind this is not a recipe. This is a coping mechanism.

My mother-in-law, a lovely woman, died Friday. If she were in my shoes, she would have made a spaghetti sauce, her mouth pursed in a way that was uniquely hers — for me, it’s soup.

First, roast a chicken. Rub the outside of the chicken with spices and stand it up off the bottom of the roasting pan on a base of peeled carrots. Let chicken and pan stand in the fridge for at least an hour, then roast at 350 degrees Fahrenheit, until it reaches 165 degrees on a meat thermometer.

Put the chicken, whole, in a large pot, and add enough water to completely cover it.

Keep in mind this is not a recipe. This is a coping mechanism.

These are the steps your hands will learn to do almost on their own, with just enough thought going on to distance and distract you from all the other things.

Three cloves of local garlic, left nested inside their papery white outer skins. A yellow onion, skinned and quartered. The drippings from the roasting pan. The cooked carrots. Some wine; some Worcestershire sauce. Bay leaves — many. Thyme — a small bunch. More black peppercorns than you would think necessary. Simple things: keep moving. Don’t think. Don’t think.

Bring to a boil. Simmer on low heat for two hours.

Let cool, and refrigerate.

The next morning, scrape the chicken fat from the surface, but don’t be too thorough. Fats carry flavour, so you want to leave enough to keep the broth rich.

Reheat.

Look down into the pot as the heat brings the liquid back to life.

The flat pearls of chicken fat on the surface swirling, coalescing, breaking apart again, burnished gold. The stock so full of flavour and protein that it gelled as it cooled, and now, as it warms again, it liquefies from the edges of the pot inwards to the middle, small pieces of cooked chicken, little more than specks, obeying their own laws of physics as they course through the stock.

Steam will rise gently and play across your face, almost solid.

The smell of the stock will fill the kitchen. It will try to fill every corner of the house. It will try to fix anything it comes across that’s broken.

Taste the broth. Taste it again: you’re allowed to. The universe of soup is fully in your control; little else is controllable, and life smacks you hard each time you forget that.

Simmer for two hours. Sometimes, a thin skein of proteins will form on parts of the surface as the stock burbles. This is good.

Allow the soup to cool again. Strain out the broth. Set the liquid aside. Pick out the meat, removing the chicken bones, the skin. Pay attention here: stay alert. As in many things, there are many small bones and sharp surfaces to steer clear of.

Take those careworn pan-bottom carrots with some stock and blend them into paste. Blend the now-transparent curls of quartered onion, too. Put the paste back into the broth along with the chicken meat. The clear broth may turn cloudy, but that’s fine.

Cut new peeled carrots into rings. Cut and add green horseshoe-slices of celery stalks. Test to see if it needs salt. A tablespoon of apple cider vinegar; I don’t know why.

Cook again.

Some people would prefer to add potatoes. I like to wait until just before dinner, and add an overloaded half-cup of star-shaped pasta noodles.

I like my universe full of stars, each one a possibility.

Fill a bowl. Eat. Share.

Cry.

If you’re still in trouble, I would recommend making biscuits, too.

Flour, butter, salt, baking powder, milk — that’s all I have for you right now.